Remember that post about the poisoned Zionist balloons I wrote yesterday? Just when you think it can’t get more ridiculous, it does. The AP released photos spreading the lies about the “poisoned balloons.”
Today’s collection of Poison Zionist Balloons links:
Naharnet: Israeli Balloons Contain No Dangerous Gases
The UN actually tested the suckers. Way to protect the world, UN!
Syrian media lies. Twice: Four Israeli poisoned balloons found in South Lebanon and Israeli warplanes continue throwing poisoned Balloons
And get a load of this editorial in the Gulf News (published in the United Arab Emirates, those lovely people who want to run our ports):
Lebanese civilians are hospitalised because of a gas attack by Israel in the past two days. The attack – in violation of UN resolution 1701 by the Hebrew state – is testimony to the fact that Israel is working against the international will of enforcing a truce with Lebanon.
The balloons were filled with poisonous gas and dropped on Tyre and surrounding areas in yet another blunt breach of the UN resolution passed by the Security Council in August last year to end the 33-day bloody war between Hezbollah and Israel.
Uh-huh. I guess the Gulf News didn’t get the memo from the UN that the balloons are filled with, um, helium.
The Lebanese Daily Star, a newspaper with an actual record of, well, researching facts, leads with this:
BEIRUT: Renewed panic spread among some Lebanese Monday, as a black balloon with a spider drawn on it landed in the heart of a Beirut neighborhood, a day after Israeli balloons landed in South Lebanon. “It is a terrorist act against our peace of mind,” Khaled Qamaryeh, owner of a store in the neighborhood of Salim Salaam, told The Daily Star.
Tell me again about how modern those folks in Lebanon are. Go ahead. Pull the other leg.
The panic over balloons began over the weekend, when several fluorescent green and orange balloons branded with the Hebrew word Ha’ir (The City) drifted into the South from Israel. Five civilians were allegedly hospitalized with nausea, breathing difficulties and dizziness after coming into contact with the balloons, but tests have thus far turned up no toxic sustances and an Israeli newspaper said they were part of an advertising campaign.
“I didn’t go near it as I was worried it may be filled with poison,” Qamaryeh said of the balloon found in his neighborhood. “I don’t trust the Israelis.”
But wait! There are even more suspicious balloons!
Around 9:30 a.m. on Monday, a handful of residents discovered what they called “an unidentified balloon,” near one of the roasteries in the area and immediately called in the Internal Security Forces and the army to investigate its contents.
“The balloon in Salim Salaam did not contain poison or dangerous substance,” the head of Internal Security Forces, Ashraf Rifi, told The Daily Star.
Police and forensic experts were sent to the site and quarantined the area as they tested the balloon for dangerous gases or other substances.
“We don’t know where the balloon came from, but it is different in color and style from the earlier balloons discovered in the South,” said Rifi.
While there is no evidence of poison, Rifi said there is a question over the “timing.”
“Israeli balloons never used to drift over to Lebanon, so why now?” he asked. “I believe it is an intentional act by Israel to cause further panic in a country already on edge,” he added.
Yes indeed! Why now! Why would even more balloons be drifting into Beirut? Could it be a vicious Zionist plot? Or could there be a group of teenagers in Beirut laughing their asses off at the reception their little present is getting?
“There is a sort of panic now in the country from any balloons,” the army source told The Daily Star.
“Now every time a child has a birthday party and some balloons are released,” the source added, “we get a call or two of panic from nearby residents.”
A white balloon was found in the southern town of Jouwaiyya near Tyre, with the words “you are the first,” written in English.
Yep. More teenagers having their little bit of fun. But still, this is not enough for the paranoid Arab minds of Israel’s neighbors. No, they must keep investigating.
The source said more comprehensive tests on the Israeli balloons will continue for the next two days to check “for chemicals and minerals” that the balloons may be carrying or are made of.
And the Poisoned Zionist Balloons will doubtless go down in Arab history along with the Death Rays That Poisoned Arafat. Beware! We Zionists are a crafty lot!
I’m fine with all the hysteria. Makes them look like genuine morons. I only have two regrets – that Hezbollah didn’t get freaked out enough at the party balloons to fire off (and waste) a couple of shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles at them, and that the balloons themselves didn’t have Hello Kitty on them.
Shalom Chatool!!!
bwahahahahahahahahahaha
Hello Kitty…
That’s good.
You know, if Lebanese balloons had drifted south, do you think anyone would have noticed/raised a ruckus/alerted international news media/etc?
Do you think anyone in Israel would have cared?
I think psychologists call this “projection.” They’d certainly send balloons laden with poisonous gas into Israel if they could figure out how to do, so they assume the Israelis–who are in any case diabolically clever–have done the same to them.
As usual, Meryl, you’re being unfair to the AP and Reuters. It’s their job to give both sides of a story. So they have reported claims that Israel is trying to gas innocent Lebanese and Israeli claims that these are simply promotional balloons. Isn’t that fair reporting?
So in the spring, when the Hezbollah war starts up again, rather than dropping leaflets asking civilians to leave areas about to be bombed, Israel should just drop balloons. They’ll probably get a better response rate.
Perhaps they could get clowns to bend the balloons into the shapes of pigs and dogs.
Why do I have the urge to sing “99 Luftballoons?”
This is what we’ve waited for.This is it, boys, this is war!
You are right to point out how absurd it is for Lebanese to get so paranoid about a few balloons drifting over the border. However, you missed the point about why The Daily Star decided to run the story (and please note that we ran it on the inside pages, not on the front page like most of the Arabic press in Lebanon.) The story is newsworthy because the balloons sparked so much panic here in Lebanon. We made a conscious effort to report the story as what it was – unfounded hysteria. The point we were tyring to get across is that there is a deep level of mistrust among Lebanese toward Israelis, a feeling that was amplified in the wake of a deadly war last summer. We have limited space and maneuvering room to make this point with a news story, where our job is simply to report the facts, unlike a commentary or an editorial. Bloggers, on the other hand, have an open and free forum, and could potentially play a greater role in building trust, instead of belitting a terrified population and adding fuel to the fires of animosity.
Bloggers, on the other hand, have an open and free forum, and could potentially play a greater role in building trust, instead of belitting a terrified population and adding fuel to the fires of animosity.
Perhaps the “terrified population” won’t recognize its own folly unless someone emphasizes it.
Ms. Dailey,
Have you heard of a Golem? Lebanon, like the rest of Israel’s neighbors, has fantasised Israel into a monster of inhuman malice and limitless capability—and now trembles in fear of a demon of its own imagination. The fact that a Lebanese newspaper does not have the manoeuvring room to tell its readers so outright is an additional sad commentary on the state of your society.
It’s a bit much, then, to expect Israel or its friends not to crack a smile when so much hatred and self-delusion boomerangs on you in such farcical way. And it is unrealistic to think that we might be able to say anything to people trapped in such paranoia that wouldn’t be construed as more proof of Israel’s guilt.
If, on the other hand, you are saying that it was simply the requirements of straight reportage that stopped your paper from emphasising the true meaning of the story, why didn’t you pair the report, in the same issue, with an editorial to spell it out?
Ms Dailey,
If you had wanted to build trust, reduce animosity, or reassure a terrified population, you may have included more than one line in your article to indicate the vague possiblity that the balloons were not full of magic killer Jew-gas.
I am quite willing to believe that yours was the least insane coverage of the evil balloons in the Arab press. But do not us for laughing. The alternative is facing the fact that all the Lebanese, including intelligent educated politicians, are willing to believe absolutely anything, as long as they can blame Israel for it. Which does not bode well for a peaceful neighbourly relationship, does it?
That’s not Lebanon, that’s Cloudcuckooland.
Kristin Dailey, this story is exactly like the story a few years ago from the Sudan where hysterical Arab men claimed (falsely) that their male organs shrank to nothing after they shook hands with “a foreigner”. I thought the Lebanese were supposed to be sophisticated and educated people, yet they seem to fall into the same paranoid fantasies as one of the more backward areas of the Arab world, an area filled with ignorant fools.
Kristen Dailey wrote:
“… our job is simply to report the facts.”
But prior to that she wrote,
“The point we were trying to get across…”
Well, which is it? This is exactly why the media is held in such contempt today, because they cannot tell the difference (or refuse to recognize the difference) between reporting facts and “getting a point across”.
The FACT was that these were harmless balloons and the accusations of “poison gas” were unfounded hysteria. But the “point [we] were trying to get across” was, well, we’ve got to blame it on the Joooos somehow.